Browns will donate all profits from FirstEnergy Stadium Pro Shop sales to community

The Cleveland Browns are donating all of the proceeds from sales at the FirstEnergy Stadium Pro Shop.

Winning games is problematic for the Cleveland Browns.

But the NFL team's community efforts have set a new NFL standard.

The Browns announced on Friday, Oct. 6, that 100% of the net proceeds from product sales at the FirstEnergy Stadium Pro Shop will go to educational initiatives and neighborhood field projects such as the one the team celebrated Friday at Cleveland's John Adams High School.

The Browns are the first NFL team to donate all of their team shop proceeds, and the club thinks it could be the first in major professional sports to take such a step. A source told Crain's that the annual commitment from the initiative is expected to exceed $250,000.

The initiative is retroactive to April 1, the start of the team's fiscal year, and will continue for the foreseeable future, said Brent Stehlik, the Browns' chief revenue officer.

Team executives meet after every season and ask, "What can we do to best align ourselves to continue to be community leaders and enhance the fan experience for our fans and partners?" Stehlik said.

One move, the Browns decided, was to lower prices at their team shop.

The club said 338 items were discounted in 2017, and the average price reduction was 25%. The price of adult jerseys went down 27%, or $40, and the cost of youth jerseys was also cut 27%, or $30.

Beyond the price cuts, though, Stehlik said the team wanted to put its in-house merchandise revenues "to good use in the community."

Stehlik added that the hope is the community initiative will drive people to the pro shop.

Fans who visit the FES store will be asked if they want to round up the total of their purchase to the next full dollar amount. The funds from such donations will be go toward school uniforms and supplies, the team said.

Browns owner Dee Haslam announced the initiative at John Adams, which is one of five schools in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District to receive new synthetic turf fields and scoreboards from the NFL team in the last two years.

"Throughout the Browns organization, we will always emphasize that one of our most important responsibilities is to maximize the special opportunities we have to represent Cleveland and make a meaningful impact without our community," Dee Haslam and her husband, Jimmy Haslam, said in a news release. "By donating all our proceeds from the Pro Shop, we have a unique avenue for our team and incredible fans to support our city, including through important educational and developmental projects like installing five CMSD multipurpose-use neighborhood fields."

NFL teams share revenues from online merchandise sales, but Stehlik said they get to keep the profits from their "brick-and-mortar" transactions. Those profits, which the team said represents a "significant bucket" of their merchandise revenue, are now being donated.

"It's the one we really have the most control over," Stehlik said of the team shop at FES. "That made it easy to make this decision."